


Out of the Frying Pan

by fluffernutter8



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Kid Fic, Steggy Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 20:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15323301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: Jack and Daniel are in DC for their annual review, but it's in the SHIELD kitchen that they stumble upon some new information.





	Out of the Frying Pan

Jack’s proud to work for SHIELD, and he’s damn good at it, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. He’s glad to be doing his bit to help the country, and especially with a cutting edge outfit that does its work quietly so Americans can sleep safely in their beds, not even knowing that they’ve been saved from danger. SHIELD does important work, and does it well.

The food they’re serving at headquarters is godawful.

“Look.” Jack elbows Daniel so he’ll look over at the limp, oily string bean dangling from Jack’s fork. “They really expect us to believe this was once attached to a real plant?”

Daniel looks at it dubiously. “Put it in a bag, we’ll bring it over to the lab for examination,” he jokes. “How’s the dessert looking?”

Jack lets his eyes wander over the waitress coming in with a new course headed toward their table. She’s pretty enough, her soft blonde hair held back with pins, but the contents of her cart… “Come on, I know where the kitchen is in this place. Let’s go scrounge up a real meal before it’s our turn with the boss.”

“You could at least pretend to have some respect for her,” Daniel says predictably, but he stands and follows Jack anyway.

“Oh, I’ve got plenty of respect for old Marge. It was a real feat, leapfrogging right to the top of the organization without stopping in for a leadership position along the way.” Jack stuffs his hands in his pockets. It’s the right look, casual, in case any staff might be looking his way. He has a badge in his pocket and as much right to be walking around this building as anyone, but might as well not call attention.

“Ever think that she might have gotten the job because she was too good just to be a city chief? Or that she’d have been happy to do that instead but no one gave her the chance?” Jack gives him a stare because it’s a funny thing for Souza to say seeing as he hadn’t exactly been begging to give up the LA job when it was offered to him, but Jack won’t mention that.

They’re getting close to the kitchen now. He can hear clatter and clanking and the sound of people calling back and forth every time the door swings open. “Whether she deserves it or not, we’re going to have to see her in an hour,” Jack says. He’ll admit that Carter’s too smart to have all the city chiefs in at once for annual review. It would be like painting a big target on the group of them. He and Daniel were scheduled alongside some broad who runs the Chicago office and already had her one-on-one with Carter and jetted out after lunch. “We don’t have to talk about her until then. You been to see a Dodgers game yet this season?”

The conversational choice is a good one - it makes them look like two pals on their way to a set meet instead of two guys who were supposed to stay in the slowly emptying dining room until Carter’s secretary came to fetch them - and Jack is about to congratulate himself when he hears from behind him say, “I’d have preferred the Dodgers stay in Brooklyn, but I suppose I’m biased.”

Even if she hadn’t already been on his mind, even if he hadn’t been in DC to see her, Jack would have recognized the voice immediately. “You coming onto me, Carter?” he says slyly before he turns around. As he spins to face her, he registers Souza, already turned and looking stunned, then the scattering of rugrats, then Carter looking at him impassively from the head of a small table tucked into a corner of the busy kitchen.

“Decidedly not,” she says, turning her attention to what looks like the littlest kid, a pint-sized girl who is very carefully dumping what seems to be an entire bottle of ketchup onto the plate in front of her. Without even looking away from securing the cap and using her knife to transfer a generous dollop of ketchup to her own plate, Carter asks, “I was under the impression that our meeting wasn’t for another hour at least. Have I mistaken my times?”

Jack had a schoolteacher who used to do that, ask questions to try to confuse you or make you feel guilty, but he refuses to be caught out. “We’re still on for seven,” he says casually. “Just came to find some better grub than the stuff they handed us out there. Didn’t realize we’d wandered into a junior agent recruitment meeting.”

“What’s grub?” pipes the tallest of the three brats, though that’s not saying much.

“In this case, it means food,” Carter tells her, then says mildly to Jack, “I’m committed to the family for a timely dinner at least four times a week, which can require some creative solutions on nights like tonight.”

Jack opens his mouth, more because it’s his turn to volley a comment back than because he has something to say. He can’t believe she managed to keep it from spreading around that she’s been raising kids for what he’d guess is upwards of ten years now (and was probably pregnant, considering that all of them share her exact hair color). Either no one in the office knows about it, which seems doubtful, or she’s successfully thwarted the SHIELD gossip chain, which speaks chilling things about her power. Luckily a remark isn’t needed, because the chattiest little Carter says, “I think that was a rude thing to say, that the food wasn’t good, and probably not even true. The food here is good, it’s always good, because even if Linda isn’t cooking, Amos is, and if they made you something bad it just means that they don’t like you very much and I think they have a good reason, too.” She juts her chin and shoves her glasses up her nose, and though it’s been a few of decades since Jack was last on the playground, he can easily read the _so there_.

Carter gives a little sigh. “What have we said, Cassandra?”

Heaving a sigh exponentially more exhausted than her mother’s, the kids recites, “That I should think before I say something rude, and count to ten. And then you told me that it’s better to be smart and wait for the best moment to make sure a person learns a lesson, but Daddy said that you have to remind people what’s right even if it’s hard, and I know it’s not right to be mean about the cooks.”

“That logic’s pretty foolproof,” says a new, amused voice from behind them. “Although usually you don’t think it’s too hard to be rude, Cass.”

The guy is just around Jack’s height, but with apparent muscles that he wears easily under a black polo tucked into a pair of chinos. He’s holding a small glass dish of butter in one hand.

“You’re probably Jack Thompson,” says the guy, and only when the pressure of his handshake is just a touch firmer than normal does Jack realize who he is. But Steve Rogers is already turning to Souza, reaching out to shake with him too. “Good to see you again, Daniel.”

Jack cuts a glare toward Souza, who covers his guilty look by saying, “Steve came out to the West Coast to help us with a situation a couple of years ago.”

Unbelievable. Not only is Captain America alive and kicking, but Souza’s apparently been in the know for years. At least he looks pretty shocked that Carter and the Captain are shacking up again, although from the lack of interest the kitchen staff is showing, it seems to be common enough knowledge. She must have dirt on every agent in DC to keep something like this quiet.

“That was a bad one,” says Rogers, maneuvering around Jack and Daniel toward the table. “Although I usually only get called in for the bad ones. Most of the rest of the time, I like my job a lot better.” He sets the butter dish down and lifts the little one up so she can sit on his lap. “I guess the butter crisis was easily averted,” he says, leaning over to Carter with quiet amusement. They both watch the middle boy continue to doggedly scoop up his potatoes and ignore the rest of them.

“It seems that Benjamin didn’t need butter for his potatoes as much as we had thought,” Carter replies primly. “I, on the other hand…” She slices herself a sliver and leaves it to melt while she cuts blithely into her salmon.

Rogers laughs. “I’d have gotten it for you too if you’d asked.”

The way she touches his hand should be nothing. It’s a brush of her fingers on his, a fond, quirked smile she glances in his direction over the head of the toddler. But Jack can’t help but stare, and Daniel says, his voice just a note too loud, “Well, we’ll leave you to finish your dinner. Maybe they’ll have put out a good dessert.”

“The apple pie is especially worthwhile,” Carter tells him. “I’ll make sure they send out a few slices. Carol will come find you at the usual time.”

Rogers nods his goodbye, seeming distracted as he attempts to eat while the smallest girl tries to grab and redirect his fork (“Thanks for the help, Annie, except I think you like ketchup a little more than I do.”). Cassandra gives them - mostly Jack - a good glare. But Benjamin looks up from his plate for the first time, and politely says, “You should try the mashed potatoes. If they let you,” before he returns immediately to eating. 

As Jack walks away, he tries to tell himself that he’s discovered some great secret of Carter’s, the family that she wants to keep hidden not only from the eyes of the enemy, but from her employees as well. But somehow he can’t quite convince himself. He and Daniel reenter the dining room, empty now except for a couple of agents picking up coffee and sandwiches for a late shift, and Jack has the definite notion that Carter’s well and truly won this round.

Well, maybe not the part with the kids. Jack can’t see how they could be considered a good thing.

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for this was "When timelines collide," which probably meant that I was supposed to write an insert fic into canon, but my brain didn't want to do that, so instead you get this. I think it probably works _ish_ because Steve's hanging with some of those Agent Carter folks, and he's in a part of the timeline that he doesn't actually belong to? Whatever, I'm a rebel, we all know it...
> 
> Anyway, it doesn't make a ton of sense to have the kids hanging around SHIELD headquarters, but I super liked the idea of them being really familiar with Mom's work, family dinners as a priority, and Jack seeing Peggy and her kids and her being so far past their rivalry that it doesn't matter at all.


End file.
